Out now: My latest book, Won't Get Fooled
Again: The Who from Lifehouse to Quadrophenia, details the
Who's amazing and peculiar journey in the years during which they
struggled to follow up Tommy with
a yet bigger and better rock opera. One of those projects, Lifehouse, was never completed,
though many of its songs formed the bulk of their 1971 album Who's Next. The other, Quadrophenia, was as down-to-earth
as the multimedia Lifehouse was
futuristic; issued as a double album in 1973, it eventually became
esteemed as one of the Who's finest achievements, despite unavoidable
initial unfavorable comparisons to Tommy.
Drawing on material from several dozen interviews and mountains of rare
archival coverage and recordings, it's the definitive account of this
fascinating period in the Who's career, which saw both some of their
greatest triumphs and, in Lifehouse,
rock's most spectacular failure. Notes MOJO's four-star review of the
book, "Unterberger digs deep and deeper still through obscure press
cuttings and his own interviews with engineers, producers and fans to
make sense of it all. He does a grand job."

Out recently:
My 2009
book, White
Light/White Heat: The
Velvet Underground Day-By-Day(now available on Jawbone
Press), is by far the most comprehensive book on the Velvet Underground
ever published. The 368-page volume details the group's recording
sessions, record releases, concerts, press reviews, and other major
events shaping their career with both thorough detail and critical
insight. Drawing on about 100 interviews and exhaustive research
through documents and recordings rarely or never accessed, it unearths
stories that have seldom been told, and eyewitness accounts that have
seldom seen print, from figures ranging from band members to managers,
producers, record executives, journalists, concert promoters, and fans.
The July 2009 issue of MOJO magazine
hails it as "an impressive means to reflect on the conundrum of what
could be the ultimate cult band...detailed and anecdote-packed"; Uncut magazine chose it as #4 in
its list of the ten best music books of 2009.

White Light/White
Heat:
The Velvet
Underground Day-By-Day includes not only basic
nuts-and-bolts
facts, but also many behind-the-scenes stories as to how their songs
were written and recorded; how their strikingly original stage shows
were devised; how the band were perceived by reviewers at the time of
their 1965-70 heyday, not just in retrospect; and how the group as a
whole underwent a most improbable, incessantly unpredictable evolution
from the most avant-garde of bohemian origins into a highly accessible,
yet still boldly creative, rock band by the time Lou Reed left the
group he'd co-founded with John Cale in early 1965. Along
the way, many unreleased concert and studio
recordings are vividly described; many obscure and unlikely concerts
delineated; and many myths that have grown up around this most
legendary of all cult bands untangled and dissected.

Events: On Wednesday, February 7 from 6:30pm-8:30pm at the Park Branch of the San
Francisco public library at 1833 Page Street, I'll present "The
Golden Age of Soul," in honor of African-American history month.This
will feature footage of soul greats such as Ray Charles, Aretha
Franklin, James Brown, Otis Redding, Booker T. & the MG's,
Nina Simone, Ike & Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles,
Sam & Dave, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, the Jackson
Five, Sly & the Family Stone, and others. Admission is free.

On Wednesday, March 7 from 7pm-9pm, on the
eve of International
Women's Day (which is the following day, March 8), I'll present "Women
in San Francisco Bay Area Rock: From
Psych to Punk" at the Rockridge Improvement
Clubat 5515 College Avenue in Oakland.
Included
will be footage of performers such as Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Lydia
Pense of Cold Blood, the Ace of Cups, the Tubes, and the Avengers.
Admission is free.

On Thursday, March 15 from 6:30pm-8:00pm, I'll
be
showing rare film clips by San Francisco
Bay Area folk-rock and
psychedelic rock performers from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s at Excelsior Works
at 5000 Mission Street in San Francisco. Included
will
be footage by Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company
with Janis Joplin, Santana, Moby Grape, Country Joe & the Fish, Sly
& the Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Grateful
Dead, the Beau Brummels, and the Youngbloods. Admission is
free.On Thursday, March 29 from 6pm-7:30pm in
Koret Auditorium at the main
branch of the
San Francisco Library at 100 Larkin Street, I'll present "Bob
Marley & the Wailers: The
Ultimate
Illustrated History." Coinciding with the publication of my book of the
same
name, this will mix film clips with pictures from the book and
discussion of Marley & the Wailers. Admission is free.On Friday, April 6 from 1pm-2:30pm in Room
206
of the Jewish Community Center of San
Francisco
at 3200 California Street, I'll present film clips of Bob Dylan from
the 1960s and 1970s. The program will follow his early career from his
emergence in the early 1960s as a protest folk singer through his
startling change to electric folk-rock in the mid-1960s; his
country-rock phase in the late 1960s; and his mid-1970s comeback with
the Blood on the Tracks and Desire albums. Admission is free.Blog: I've started a blog where I
post about various topics, including vintage rock music, biking and
hiking in the San Francisco Bay Area, socially responsible living, and
baseball. Go to Folkrocks
to check it out.

In Ugly Things: Issue #44 (Spring 2017)
of the (mostly) 1960s
rock-centered magazine Ugly Things has my lengthy
interview with Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean. Issue
#42 (Summer 2016) has my similarly lengthy
interview with original Yardbirds bassist
(and, through mid-1966, musical director) Paul Samwell-Smith. Issue #38
(Fall/Winter
2014) has my 16-page interview with Kinks
guitarist Dave Davies. The article also
includes an extensive sidebar of information about the Kinks' 1960s
career that I unearthed on my visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Library and Archives in spring 2014.

Also in Ugly
Things, issue #31 (Spring
2011) and issue #32 (Fall/Winter 2011) have my
mammoth
(30,000-word) two-part interview with Billy Harrison, guitarist
for the great mid-1960s band Them, Van Morrison's first group. Issue #25 has my huge
(30-page) story on the Music Machine, one of the greatest
garage-psychedelic groups of the 1960s, and the group that had more
depth and quality to their original repertoire than perhaps any other '60s band who are
known primarily for one hit single ("Talk Talk," in the Music Machine's
case). The article is based around lengthy interviews with two original
members (bassist Keith Olsen and guitarist Mark Landon) who have
rarely spoken about their experiences in the group, as well as
two members of the second Music Machine lineup (keyboardist Harry
Garfield and guitarist Alan Wisdom) who have never before discussed
their stint in the band.

Issue #23 (Summer
2005) has
my similarly lengthy (20-page) story on the Belfast Gypsies. Including
ex-members of
Them, they were one of the finest overlooked bands of the British
Invasion,
their sole 1966 album produced by the legendary Kim Fowley. This is the
first comprehensive history of this mysterious group ever to appear,
the
twisted stranger-than-fiction saga drawn from extensive interviews with
Belfast Gypsies guitarist Ken McLeod, who consulted his original
diaries
from the mid-'60s to reconstruct the group's career. Excerpts from my
interview
with Kim Fowley about the Belfast Gypsies also appear in the article;
for
the full interview, click here.

Flashback
magazine: I have numerous articles and reviews in the first
eight issues of the new rock history magazine Flashback, which is now out
and available. My full-length articles are on the band Montage (a
vehicle for chief Left Banke member Michael Brown after he left the
group), the resurgence of vinyl in the reissue market, archiving
rock magazines of the 1960s and 1970s, and the recent rock memoir boom.
Also I did
lengthy reviews of the John Fahey box set, the Kinks BBC box set, the
Phil Ochs documentary
DVD, the Graham Bond box set (with a sidebar interview with
compiler/Bond friend/Cream lyricist Pete Brown), and the book dedicated
to Syd Barrett's artwork, among other
items, sometimes with interviews with the people involved.
Ordering/availability information is on the magazine's website, www.flashbackmag.com.

In Record Collector: The April and May
2013 issues of the British monthly magazine Record
Collectorhave my two-part article on the most interesting
rare San Francisco Bay Area rock records of the 1960s. The September
2014 issue has my story on recently discovered 1969-1971 Bob Dylan
acetates. The November 2017 issue has my five-page article on Dion's
mid-1960s folk-rock phase, based on a recent first-hand interview with
Dion himself. The December 2017 issue has my story on Television
guitarist Richard Lloyd, whom I interviewed about his new memoir.

The
March 2011 issue of Record Collector
has my lengthy
article on the recently discovered Tim Buckley demos, from late 1965
and mid-1966, that were issued on the bonus disc on Rhino Handmade's
deluxe edition of his self-titled debut album. I interviewed Larry
Beckett (frequent Buckley songwriting collaborator, and drummer on the
1965 demos), Jim Fielder (bassist on the 1965 demos), and Elektra
Records president Jac Holzman for the piece.

Also, the May 2010
issue of Record Collector has
my story on The T.A.M.I. Show,
the legendary 1964 rock concert film featuring James Brown, the Rolling
Stones, the Beach Boys, the Miracles, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Lesley
Gore, Chuck Berry, and others; I interviewed director Steve Binder for
the article. The September
2007 issuehas
my feature on Fairport Convention's original woman singer, Judy Dyble,
drawing from an extensive recent interview with her. The August 2005
issue has my 20-page article on the top 25
overlooked American
folk-rock albums, with in-depth analysis of each LP and new
first-hand
interview material with some of the artists.On the
air: On Sunday, May 14 from 8pm-10pm, I'll be the guest on the Rock of Ages show on
KWBR in Point Reyes, California.

On Thursday, February
11, 2010, I was
one of the guest experts
speculating about what the Beatles would have sounded like if they had
managed to stay together for one more album on WAMU (88.5 FM) in
Washington, DC. The program's archived at wamu.org/programs/the_beatles_one_more_album.

In MOJO: The Hendrix & the Summer of Love edition
of the MOJO Classic series,
published in the summer of 2007, has my articles on Big Brother &
the Holding Company and George Harrison's visit to Haight-Ashbury in
the summer of 1967. The Greatest
Album Covers of All Time edition
of the MOJO Classic series,
published in spring 2007, has my article on psychedelic LP sleeves.
Also, the January 2005 issue of MOJO has
my lengthy article on Donovan, and the July 2004 issue of MOJO has
my lengthy article on the 1972 Wattstax Festival, the largest American
soul concert ever staged.

In Oxford American: The
12th annual Oxford American Southern
music issue, which came out in late 2010, has my article on Judy Henske
& Jerry Yester's 1969 cult psychedelic album Farewell Aldebaran (an entirely
different piece than my chapter on Henske and Yester in Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll).

Turn! Turn! Turn! influences Johnny
Cash?:
From the November 2004 MOJO cover story on Johnny Cash, where
producer
Rick Rubin discusses the last album Johnny Cash recorded, American
V: A Hundred Highways:

"Rubin, meanwhile, had been discovering a new
fascination
with early '60s American folk music. 'I had just read the book Turn!
Turn! Turn! [by MOJO's own Richie Unterberger] and I
started
getting very excited about a bunch of people like Tim Hardin, Joan
Baez.
I sent Johnny some of these songs. Whether he liked the song or not, it
would always spark his memory and he'd say, "That made me think of this
other song, and I like this one better." One example of that was the
song
"Four Strong Winds." Johnny said he remembered the version by Ian and
Sylvia."

Author Sylvie Simmons goes on to write:

"I sat and watched Cash record 'Four Strong
Winds' in
his bedroom in Hendersonville -- a beautiful, vulnerable version. He
also
recorded Tom Paxton's 'Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound.'"

Book Buying Info:

All of my books are widely available at both
independent
booksellers and chain bookstores throughout North America, as well as
many
such outlets overseas. To order on-line via amazon.com, click on the
appropriate
book cover below.